Debating the Doctrine of jabr (Compulsion) 87
asserts that it is possible that God will command the human being to
do what is beyond his capacity.^94 One might expect a similar statement
from the Jabrī in chapter 19, however any reference to this statement
appears only in the Sunni’s responses.
The Sunni, with his keen desire to lead the discussion into the
domain of “obligating what is beyond one’s capability”, actually takes
the Muʿtazilī position. He even promises that this theme will be dis-
cussed at length later on,^95 but this promise is never fulfilled in this
debate. Thus, this theme is never exhausted in chapter 19.
In the beginning of the dialogue, the Sunni accuses the Jabrī that his
belief in jabr means that all which God obligates the human being to
perform is “obligating what is beyond one’s capability”. The whole
system of reward and punishment is superfluous, if the Jabrī’s position
is accepted:
[The belief in God’s unity] is what [God] has entrusted His messengers
with. For the sake of it He brought down His books, incited the human
beings to believe, and set reward and punishment. He made laws in order
to obtain the [belief in God’s unity], and to perfect it. But from what
you say, Jabrī, the human being has absolutely no power to obtain it, he
cannot affect it, [the belief in God’s unity] is not his action. Therefore,
obligating him is obligating what is beyond his capability.^96Furthermore, the Sunni depicts the belief in jabr as absurd: God for-
bids the human being to perform certain acts, and then punishes him
for performing those acts, although he has not actually performed
them, as the real agent of those acts is God Himself. In sum, the belief
in jabr makes laws, orders, and prohibitions, superfluous, as the fol-
lowing examples demonstrate:
It is you, who declared, that God punishes the human being for not obey-
ing His commands and performing what was prohibited on him. It is as
punishing him for failing to fly to the sky and failing to move the moun-
tains and the waters of the oceans [...]. It is you, who declared that what
God obligates His servants is similar to obligating the blind to write and
the chronically ill to fly.^9794 Al-Rāzī, al-Maḥṣūl, vol. 2, p. 215; Shihadeh, The Teleological Ethics, pp. 103–
104.
95 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shifāʾ al-ʿalīl, p. 327; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shifāʾ
al-ʿalīl, 1903, p. 144.
96 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shifāʾ al-ʿalīl, p. 318; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shifāʾ
al-ʿalīl, 1903, p. 139.
97 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shifāʾ al-ʿalīl, p. 318; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shifāʾ
al-ʿalīl, 1903, p. 139.
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